Over the years I have worked a fair amount on colloids. Colloids are just suspensions of small solid particles or liquid droplets in a liquid, often water. The particles or droplest are too small to be seen by the naked eye, typically around a thousandth of a millimetre across. Colloids are common. For example, milk is a colloid, it is tiny droplets of fat in water. Paints are another. Opals are produced by drying colloidal silica, and the beautiful colours are produced by light diffracted by the particles which form a crystal when the opal dries.  So I have read a fair number of scientific papers on opals, but that did not prepare me for the website of Purest Colloids.

They appear to want to sell you colloidal silver, gold, copper, platinum, etc, i.e., suspensions of very small particles of these metals in water. Apparently the idea is to drink the colloidal suspensions to promote “optimum health”, as a “skin conditioner” and to allow “improved sports performance”. Now I have no problem with colloids being good for you, I had some on my breakfast only this morning and you can’t make a cappuccino without one.

But silver and gold? Gold in particular is chemically very inert, naively I would think that if you drink colloidal gold it would basically go straight through you and so the only result would be, if you will excuse the expression, a 0.00001 carat number two the next day.

Their brochure is entertaining – in principle I don’t have time to read this stuff but it kind of sucks you in. It is an interesting mixture of scientifically correct statements like “Particle size controls the surface area”, and vague health claims “supports improved hand-eye coordination”.

They may be mixing true statements in with unsubstantiated marketing claims, to give credence to the claims. This is an easy thing to do, for example, I might say: Quantum physics has allowed us to develop the computer and the laser. Physics academics are badly underpaid. Physicists have discovered black holes at the centres of galaxies. Hopefully the truthful statements I included there will make you think I need a pay rise. Although I worry that telling you what I am doing may spoil the effect.